


Follow Freeman

by NervousAsexual



Series: The Right Man in the Wrong Place [4]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Loss, M/M, Psychological Trauma, everything Barney hates, headcrabs, inept comforting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24059803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: As far as Barney knows he's the only one left. Pinned down by snipers, exhausted, and sore, he isn't sure he can give Gordon the comfort he deserves.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman
Series: The Right Man in the Wrong Place [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559494
Comments: 10
Kudos: 141





	Follow Freeman

For a while it was real still up there on the rooftop, still enough that the crows started coming in to eat what was left of the zombies and I got to itching to make a run for it. All those holes in the floor, all the walls half tore-down--I could make it. Right? If I rolled three feet to my left I’d drop down a floor and I’d be so close to the grenade cache I could touch it, and then it was just a matter of throwing them out to those snipers. I could do that, couldn’t I?

Probably not. It was a trap, after all. I was running on a half-hour of sleep in two days and I still knew it was a trap. The instant I got out from the cover of the pillar I was hiding behind the snipers would have the insides of my head splattered all over that building.

So I just stayed there, crouched down behind the concrete, until the muscles in my legs were burning and my mouth was so dry I coulda cried. Maybe this was the universe's way of balancing itself out. Gordon and Alyx survived, so it was only fair that somebody had to die.

Part of me wanted so bad to go down swinging, but I knew it wouldn't mean anything. I had my rifle, for all the good it would do me with the snipers tucked away in apartments clear across the street. If I hadn't been so stupid I would have saved my shots and stayed down where the grenades were. No, I thought it would help to run up where the hunter dropped and keep it away from the rest of the rebels. Now I wasn't sure it had made any difference. The group I'd left hadn't moved in a while, and even when I tried to yell down to them I didn't get any answer.

It'd been so quiet for so long that the crows were starting to come in to roost and then headcrabs got to creeping up the stairs and I thought that sealed it, the three I'd left behind had to be dead because that youngest one killed every headcrab she saw whether or not it was an appropriate time to kill them. She wouldn't have let it get by her if she were...

I wish it hadn't, but the thought did cross my mind that the only thing the rifle was good for was making sure the Combine couldn't get the satisfaction of killing me themselves.

There was a shot and my heart just about stopped, but when I looked up the second shot came and I saw this crow explode in a mess of blood and feathers. The snipers were getting bored. Or maybe they wanted to make sure I knew they hadn't gone anywhere. Maybe both.

But when I looked up I caught this flash of orange coming up the stairs and whatever the snipers were trying to tell me got lost in the shuffle.

"Gordon?" I called down. And he looked up at me and there he was again. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He made some sign, I wasn't even processing enough to try and understand. "Gordon, I can't move. These snipers got me pinned down."

He took off towards the grenades and pulled out this big orange gun or something. He grabbed a grenade and did something with the gun, and the grenade just sort of hovered there in front of it. Then he went straight over to where the first sniper had shot the crow and shot the grenade clear across the street and through the window where the sniper was hiding. I didn't have a clue what he was doing but what was I gonna do to stop him? He just charged up the stairs even though it put him right in the way of the snipers. They shot and he stumbled but kept going and I thought, they must have missed him, they have to have missed them, and he threw another grenade and another and kept running, right across the remains of the top floor and up to me. He was still going full-tilt when he slammed into me. If I hadn't still been wearing my CP armor he woulda crushed me with the hug he gave me.

I didn't even have the option to hug him back, he was hugging me that tight.

He kept hanging on for what seemed like forever and I tried to count in my head--how many grenades, how many snipers. I didn't realize at first how much he was shaking. Not until the moment when suddenly he was sobbing.

It scared the bejesus out of me. I'd never heard him cry before. The only sounds I'd ever heard him make were bad, always meant he was hurting somehow. I tried to push him back and see where he was shot, but even though there were enough scuffs and dents and scrapes on him and the armor both, enough to set my heart thumping even faster, I couldn't see him bleeding anywhere.

"Gordon?" I asked. "What's wrong?" He let go of me and sat back on his legs but kept crying. He put his hands up over his face. When I asked him again he shook his head. "Buddy, I can't help you if I don't know what…"

*They said 'follow Freeman,'* he signed. He still kept looking down at the floor. *But they won't follow Freeman.*

At the time I thought it must have been the heat or the stress because I didn't know what that meant. I gave him a hug and he cried some more.

After a while he calmed down enough to sign, *Rebels.* He slid his glasses up on top of his head and put his hands on his eyes for a moment before he kept going. *Saw me coming. They wanted to come with. Always ran ahead.* He looked up at me like I could fix it, and he spelled out the last word. *Snipers.*

He looked so devastated, like he did when I was the one who was hurt, but I didn't know how to tell him that I would have done exactly the same. There was just something about Gordon, you know? You looked at him and you knew this was somebody special. This was the one Free Man and if anybody could put a stop to the Combine it was him, so you had to make sure he got to where he needed to be without getting hurt, and if that meant running ahead in sniper territory, well, it wasn't like you were gonna live forever anyway.

*All dead.*

"Gordon, I…"

*They understood,* he told me. *I know they understood. They…* He shook his head. *All. Dead.*

What do you say to that? That I knew how he felt? That this was just how the world worked now? Both of those things were true but neither of them helped. I hugged him tight. It was all I could think to do.

He kept crying. I guess I must have been crying too, maybe for me and maybe for him. Who knew what he'd been doing for the last twenty years, but I got the feeling he wasn't used to watching the people he was trying to save die at this rate before. Hell, I wasn't used to it, and I… I saw a lot of shit in CP that I wish I could have forgotten.

He rested his head on my shoulder for a while. I didn't know what else to do. All the restless adrenaline I'd had with the snipers keeping me pinned down was gone and I was tired and tense and my legs were killing me from crouching there. It felt bad and it would only get worse because all I could think was how badly I wanted all this to be over, even at the beginning of the revolution we'd all been waiting for. That was all it was, anyway. It was only the beginning and there wasn't going to be time to rest and there was the possibility of being killed every single minute of every single day. I held onto Gordon because right then he was the only good thing I saw in my future.

He pulled back first and even though I wasn't ready to let go that's just what I did. I let him sit back and take a few deep shuddery breaths that made me feel worse. His eyes were so red but he kept rubbing them, even though it clearly hurt.

*Sorry,* he said. I wanted to ask him what for and tell him he hadn't done anything worth apologizing for and probably hadn't since the day Black Mesa went up in flames. *We should move. Sorry.*

I didn't know what to do but I had to do something. That's why I took his head in both of my hands and pulled him down so our foreheads were touching, even though I didn't have it planned out any farther than that. I wasn't thinking at all when I kissed him.

It only lasted a minute and it was just my lips pressed against his, both chapped and dry and almost numb.

He pushed me back and I thought, Barney, you absolute fucking idiot, why did you do that, what about him made you think he wanted you to kiss him, why can't you just let him tell you what he needs instead of--

His fingers brushed my cheek and he gave me this sad smile. *Sorry.*

"You're sorry? Buddy, no, I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm… Dehydrated, I guess. Not thinking straight. I'm so sorry."

He shook his head.

"We should get moving." I tried to give him a smile but I'm not sure it worked. "Citadel's not gonna storm itself."

His arms came up around me and they were only there for the quickest, briefest squeeze but it felt so good.

*You walk?* He gave me this questioning look.

"Yeah. I think I can walk."

All the same he helped me up and the way the stiff muscles in my legs stretched I needed it. Didn't stop me from feeling guilty. He'd just watched people die for him, and he was the one comforting me?

"I'm sorry about the rebels, Gordon." He helped me hobble over to the stairs and he was the one to check for headcrabs. "I don't know if it'll help but I know what it's like to watch people die. I don't think…" I thought of the group I'd left downstairs. "I came here with a group too. I think I'm the only one of them left."

Thinking about it made me want to sink down there on the stairs and cry, but he gave me this look and his one arm got tighter around my shoulder. He made like he was going to sign but couldn't with me there being a dead weight. We made it down to the first floor and I tried hard not to look for bodies, but when I started out toward the street he pulled me real gently toward the basement stairs.

The electric kept flickering but he led me right into the knee-deep water like it was nothing. There were things, bodies, in the water, and I thought I would break down there. If I recognized them, I thought, I would want to kill myself. He switched on that HEV flashlight and I could see they were headcrabs zombies, dead, all of them. That was only a little better.

"Where are we going?" I asked him. I didn't know how long I could do this and I just wanted to get back to the fighting I was supposed to be doing. Get it done and over with, even if I didn't have a plan.

He led me around a corner. First thing I saw was this light flickering in some kind of makeshift room. I told myself if he was going to try and convince me to stay here and get my feet back under me I would have to hit him, but then I saw what he was getting at.

There were two of them left. One was an older guy, the one who'd helped me rig up the comms back when we first got separated from the main group. He was curled up on the floor but as we got closer I could see that he was still breathing, and sitting beside him was this younger dark-haired girl not too different than Alyx. Both of them were from my group. Both of them were still alive.

Before I could even say anything the girl looked up and saw us.

"Oh thank God," she said. "I was afraid you wouldn't be able to get to him, Dr. Freeman!"

I looked at Gordon and he wiped at his eyes with both hands.

*Can't believe they stayed,* he signed. *First time for everything.*

“We tried to follow you up,” the girl told me. “But there were headcrabs, the skinny ones that move fast. One of them got Otis and I couldn’t just leave him behind. I’m so sorry. As soon as Dr. Freeman came through I told him where you were.”

I told her that it was okay, and it was. I was pretty damn proud of her for not abandoning her friend when things got hairy. I knew the headcrabs she meant--they were the kind that were poisonous. CP used to issue antidotes to us cops but hadn't for a long time and I knew that even if it didn’t kill you outright it would get you pretty damn close. Otis was lucky just to be here.

*Tell them wait,* Gordon said. *Together.*

I told them.

“But the Citadel,” Otis said. He started to brace himself on one arm and slipped on the concrete. “We have to get Dr. Freeman…”

“I’ll get him there,” I told him. “You two stay and help any others that might come through.”

As we headed back up to street level Gordon put his hand in mine and squeezed. I knew he was thinking they’d be safer there but I didn’t know if I fully believed that. Part of me wanted them along with us, where I could watch and make sure they were safe. But the fact that I’d spent the last six hours trapped on a rooftop by snipers made it clear that I couldn’t even do that right.

There was a barrier up ahead, and I stopped at the checkpoint to use my security codes. I almost wished they were disabled--maybe that wouldn’t have stopped us entirely from getting to the Citadel, but it would give me a little more time to get my head on right--but the barrier opened like I wasn’t a traitor to the Combine at all. I was so tired.

Beside me Gordon sniffled and wiped at his face. I’d do it for him, I thought. As afraid as I was of what was waiting for us, I could do anything for him.


End file.
